A common complaint about organic and local foods is that they're more expensive than "conventional" (industrially grown) foods. Most consumers don't realize how much we're already paying for the conventional foods, before we even get to the supermarket. Our tax dollars subsidize the petroleum used in growing, processing, and shipping these products. We also pay direct subsidies to the large-scale, chemical-dependent brand of farming. And we're being forced to pay more each year for the environmental and health costs of that method of food production.
Here's an exercise: add up the portion of agricultural fuel use that is paid for with our taxes ($22 billion), direct Farm Bill subsidies for corn and wheat ($3 billion), treatment of food-related illnesses ($10 billion), agricultural chemical cleanup costs ($17 billion), collateral costs of pesticide use ($8 billion), and costs of nutrients lost to erosion ($20 billion). At minimum, that's a national subsidy of at least $80 billion, about $725 per household each year. That plus the sticker price buys our "inexpensive" conventional food.
Organic practices build rather than deplete the soil, using manure and cover crops. They eliminate pesticides and herbicides, instead using biological pest controls and some old-fashioned weeding with a hoe. They maintain and apply knowledge of many crops. All this requires extra time and labor. Smaller farms also bear relatively higher costs for packaging, marketing, and distribution. But the main difference is that organic growers aren't forcing us to pay expenses they've shifted into other domains, such as environmental and health damage. As they're allowed to play a larger role in the U.S. agricultural economy, our subsidy costs to industrial agriculture will decrease. For a few dollars up front, it's a blue-chip investment.
-Steven L Hopp
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